What I got - Discount Fate Spin-off.
The Monogatari Series, or, more accurately, its anime adaptation by studio Shaft, has had an absolutely profound impact on the industry. Yet, compared to similar era-defining shows such as Evangelion or Madoka, it spawned a shockingly low amount of straight-up imitations. And it's not hard to see why, an author has to have at least 150 IQ to even attempt to write this type of story, as well as immense confidence not to be afraid of unfavorable comparisons with Nisio Isin. Though IQ below 100 and the Dunning-Kruger effect is also an option, Bunny Girl Senpai exists as an ostensive example of how NOT to imitate Monogatari. Undead Girl Murder Farce is not THAT bad, but it’s still way too far from being good. A more accurate comparison would be with Cube x Cursed x Curious - both of these series successfully manage to replicate some aspects of Monogatari while failing as a story overall. What’s also interesting is that these parallels in execution exist despite the fact that the two imitator series in question focus on entirely distinct elements of the Monogatari formula. C3 is an action harem where the protagonist does psychotherapy for girls with supernatural afflictions. And Undead Girl Murder Farce is a supernatural detective full of verbal foreplay between a human-turned-supernatural invincible MC and his aristocratic, sharp-witted Yamato Nadeshiko girlfriend. Which doubles as a description of one more series, Kyokou Suiri, by the way, when I call all these shows “imitations,” I REALLY mean it.
But enough about their similarities, the actual important part is the differences. The unique selling point of Monogatari is the best prose ever created by man and post-modern reflections on the otaku culture. The unique selling point of Kyokou Suiri is the namesake “made-up deductions” deconstruction of the murder mystery genre. And this is where the troubles with Undead Girl Murder Farce begin, it just doesn’t have a unique selling point. It’s set in the XIX century Europe, except it’s not really the XIX century Europe, but rather The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen cinematic universe, with Sherlock Holmes, Jack the Ripper, Arsene Lupin and so on appearing as characters. Which has been done to death. There is also the fact that the supernatural in this universe exists in the open, as an organic part of society, but the story barely explores this aspect. The series just doesn’t really do all that much, and what it does, it doesn’t do very well. Nothing illustrates this better than putting the titles of all these shows next to each other:
Bakemonogatari - Ghostory - a pun and a factual description of the content.
Kyokou Suiri - Made-up Deductions - also a factual description of the content.
Undead Girl Murder Farce / Cube x Cursed x Curious - this is just trying too hard to advertise the expected quirkiness of the genre without any meaningful substance of its own. It’s shallow and derivative. Like, the word "farce" has an actual meaning, and there is nothing in the show that fits it, it is not a farcical show, using this word for the name is just pretentiousness.
The only well-made part of the story is the banter between the protagonists (which is the single easiest step of the formula to imitate, even Bunny Girl Senpai had decent banter). Outside of banter, the writing is subpar. Including, but not limited to:
The characters aren’t developed and act nonsensically at times, like when an entire family barely flinches in response to their relative getting killed after being revealed as a murderer.
The dialogue often exists to dump plot points on the audience with no regard for how natural it is to actually say those things at the moment.
Old-timey murder mystery cliches, like telling a person’s entire life story based on the stains on their clothes, are mindlessly reproduced without anything meaningful done with them.
An abject failure of the murder mystery element, it’s full of contrivances and plot convenience. It even commits the biggest sin of detective fiction: not telling the audience all the information necessary to solve the case. For example, the circumstances of one murder depend on the mansion’s layout - a layout that wasn’t actually shown at any point before the reveal.
Every single memetic XIX-century character (Sherlock Holmes, etc.) in existence is vomited into the same story arc with no sense of restraint.
Gratuitous battle shonen cliches, a character can’t just be a demon slayer by himself, he has to be a member of a special Demon Slayer Corps full of nakamatachi with distinct silhouettes straight from Kimetsu no Yaiba. The series gets progressively more battle-shonen-esque as it goes.
The direction of the adaptation weirdly parallels the writing. It’s lacking in all but one aspect, which is the pacing. I think everyone and their mother have commented that every episode feels like it only lasts 5-10 minutes, it’s very engaging. But outside of pacing, the direction isn’t all that much. The series director is Omata Shin’ichi, a Studio Shaft graduate also known for Kaguya-sama and Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu. You can clearly see this with the visuals of the show being full of recognizable “shaftisms,” yet those feel like mechanical surface copying without any underlying substance, especially when measured against other ex-Shaft directors such as Itamura Tomoyuki (Vanitas and Youfkashi no Uta) whose “shaftisms” look like a genuine artistic vision.
For example, the "glitchy green screen" and the "archaic wipe transition" effects are just failed "ironically bad" stylizations. Because stylizations are supposed to have style to them, there is nothing stylish about a wipe transition, anyone can do them in Windows Movie Maker, it takes no thought or effort. And wtf do green screen effects have to do with a murder mystery set in the XIX century? It's the last genre you'd expect to see CGI special effects in, there is no thematic connection, again, it's just pretentiousness.
The director also took the worst possible lesson one could take from working on the Monogatari franchise: how to fuck up the narrative by arbitrarily changing the arc order. The anime starts with an (original?) lore-dump episode that irreparably ruins the actual first arc of the story (episodes 2-4 of the anime) by retroactively turning all the plot points revealed there (for the first time, in the proper order) into pointless repetition (like the reveal of which exact supernatural beings the main couple are), as well as deflating many intended to be tense moments (like when the main character who’s been acting as a goofy clown for the entire arc reveals himself to be an insanely strong fighter in the arc finale - but we’ve already been spoiled on that by the first episode).
And then there are fight scenes that are pure cringe, with characters double and triple jumping in the air as if it’s a match of Super Smash Bros.
On top of all that, the anime is hamstrung by being single-cour, we just see a few disjointed criminal cases, without any meaningful progress to the overarching narrative (assuming the original source material even has any).
4/10 for a subpar adaptation of subpar source material.
